Ebonyi loses huge revenue yearly, the Commissioner for Commerce and Industry has said.

The Ebonyi State Government loses about N50 annually to fraudsters at the state’s quarries, the state’s Commissioner for Commerce and Industry, Ifeanyi Ike, has said.Mr. Ike made the disclosure in an interview in Abakaliki on Thursday.

He attributed the loss to “the unwholesome activities of unscrupulous individuals at the quarry sites”.The commissioner said, in a given month, government loses two to five million Naira; which if approximated means the state loses about N60 million yearly.He said the government has installed a N30 million weigh bridge, to curb the fraud.

“The government has been losing such huge sums of revenue to some unscrupulous elements in the state because the bridge has not been functional.“The weigh bridge is to determine the number of trucks and tonnes of crushed stones that leave the quarry enterprise zone.

“The problem is that most of this money is being siphoned by some unscrupulous individuals in the habit of stealing from the State Government,” he said.Mr. Ike said that the ministry recently apprehended a revenue collector at the Amofia Quarry in the state for using forged receipts.

“The forged receipt has the inscription of Ebonyi State Government on it and was used to collect revenue for aprivate establishment.“The State Government will no longer tolerate a situation where top government functionaries use fake government receipts to defraud the state,” he warned.